Not to be confused with "In dingo child", which is what your child might become if you misplace it in Australia.[1]

Indigo children are people whose "auras" are indigo in color. Allegedly they are somehow aliens or part alien or something and aren't on the autistic spectrum and don't have ADHD or anything like that, so stop saying that right now.

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The term "indigo child" comes to us from self-described synesthete and psychic Nancy Ann Tappe, a reader of auras:[2]

The Indigo label describes the energy pattern of human behavior which exists in over 95% of the children born in the last 10 years … This phenomena [sic] is happening globally and eventually the Indigos will replace all other colors.

The concept was further fleshed out by businessman Lee Carroll and his imaginary friend supposedly channelledspirit guide Kryon. According to Carroll, the indigo children are some sort of next step in human evolution. However, as we blues and violets are unable to recognize them for their true potential, they end up getting classified as attention-deficit instead.

Should you ask any modern adherents of the indigo child movement, they'll deny all of this. None of them are quite sure where the name originated, but it definitely did not come from a bunch of New Agecranks and their invisible guru.

It used to be that indigos were easily identified by analyzing their auras. As the theorists no longer believe this, they've had to come up with some new criteria. Lee Carroll lists the following traits:[3]

They come into the world with a feeling of royalty (and often act like it).

They have a feeling of "deserving to be here," and are surprised when others don't share that.

Self-worth is not a big issue. They often tell the parents "who they are."

They have difficulty with absolute authority (authority without explanation or choice).

They simply will not do certain things; for example, waiting in line is difficult for them.

They get frustrated with systems that are ritually oriented and don't require creative thought.

They often see better ways of doing things, both at home and in school, which makes them seem like "system busters" (nonconforming to any system).

They seem antisocial unless they are with their own kind. If there are no others of like consciousness around them, they often turn inward, feeling like no other human understands them.

They will not respond to "guilt" discipline ("Wait till your father gets home and finds out what you did").

They are not shy in letting you know what they need.

So, indigo children are entitled, self-important, antisocial, tactless, disorderly, bratty, rigid in thought, very rebellious, and have issues with empathy. Clearly, the indigo generation will herald a new golden age. A less modern mind might see this list as attributes that could be subjectively applied to almost any child with equal accuracy, suggesting very little predictive power. What Forer effect?

Indigo children have had time to grow up into indigo adults and were neither extraordinary nor changed the world.[citation NOT needed]

Important new arrivals are the crystal children. There is disagreement over exactly what a crystal child is.

Crystal children "have a crystal-coloredaura" whatever that means. Anyway crystal children are more peaceful than indigo children, magic happens around them, they like to play with crystals, and they may start talking late but communicate telepathically. Like indigo children, crystal children have heightened psychic abilities, so it goes on. Crystal children have been around since about the start of the 21st century and will change the world when they grow up. Alternatively, there have always been a few crystals around; Jesus was one of them, that's why the word Christ is like the word crystal (a claim that makes linguists facepalm, since the two words are etymologically unrelated and just happen to sound alike in English). Sources agree there are more of them now,[4] and it's totally not because the idea's trendy in New Age circles at the moment.

There are also rainbow children; again, people can't agree exactly what a rainbow child is. Some say rainbow child is another name for a crystal child. Doreen Virtue disagrees and claims rainbow children are different and even more special than crystals. Others say rainbow children are the children of crystal children.

The concept of a generation of human children transitioning into a "next stage" of human evolution, complete with psychic powers, is (spoilers!) awfully similar to what happens in the renowned 1953 science fiction novel Childhood's End, by Arthur C. Clarke. One wonders whether someone read it and decided to lift the idea and sell it to parents who want to be told their children are special and unique.

Jenny McCarthy used to believe that she was an indigo and her son was an even more evolved crystal child. She even ran a website — Indigo Moms — that served as a meeting place for parents of indigos and crystals. The site vanished in 2007, around the time Jenny got her degree from the "University of Google" and decided that her "crystal child" was vaccine damaged[5] and his autism is definitely not due to genetics the way he had supposedly been a "crystal" by virtue of genetics.